| web | http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/against-nativism/ |
| doc-title | Against Nativism |
| author | Michael Pollan |
| publication | New York Times Magazine |
| date | 1994-05-15 |
| quote | There’s no question that these migrations are sometimes destructive of the ecological status quo, if indeed such a thing even exists. But migrations of species by whatever means is an abiding part of natural history; in any event, they’re almost always irreversible. Turning back the ecological clock to 1492 is a fool’s errand, futile and pointless to boot. It seems to me we gardeners would do better to try to work with the mongrel ecology we’ve inherited -- to start out from here. We seem to feel these days that we need something we can call the new American garden. But if we must have a national garden style, there’s no reason it has to be xenophobic, or founded on illusions of a lost American Eden. Wouldn’t a more cosmopolitan garden, one that borrowed freely from all the world’s styles and floras, that made something of history rather than trying to escape it -- wouldn’t such a garden be more in keeping with the American experience? ... Here’s to multihorticulturalism. |
| source | UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan in New York Times Magazine |
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